


Get Physical

by yourcrookedheart



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Post-Canon, Sparring, questionable descriptions of fighting techniques
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 14:18:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13836540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: From her slouched position on the floor Faith grinned up at Buffy, lower lip shiny with ruby-red blood, and Buffy felt a rush of arousal burn through her, clean and arrow-straight.Or: Faith and Buffy, sparring, and a relationship in flux.





	Get Physical

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be done for Femslash February, but February is a short month and I'm not good with deadlines. Let's just say every month needs more femslash and keep it at that.

Buffy had fought most of her lovers at some point.

Angel; precise and measured as he taught her some of his deadliest moves, and arrogant enough to forget that meant she’d also learned how to block them when he turned them on her afterwards.

Riley; methodical and eager to prove himself. Read as: predictable. Perhaps that should’ve tipped her off sooner.

Spike; a whirlwind of slashes and leather, chaos in excess and always, always aiming to hurt.

There were a lot of metaphors in fighting, when you thought about it.

Faith was a little bit like wildfire; bold and striking out wherever the wind blew her. Dangerous enough to be a threat, playful enough to obscure the risk. Thrilled by the violence, or the game, or whatever it was that fueled her.

And, damn it, her punches hurt.

“You’re holding back.” Faith danced along the lines of the mat, dragging her bare feet across the black vinyl. She’d barely broke a sweat, which was more than a little irritating seeing as Buffy felt a cool bead of perspiration make its way down her temple. “Come on, you’re embarrassing yourself.”

Buffy’s retaliating strike hit air as Faith darted away, grinning delightedly.

“We shoulda taped this. Blackmail material for _weeks_.”

Another failed riposte, Faith easily merging her dodge into a roll, and Buffy suppressed the childish snarl that wanted to erupt from her throat — or worse, the stomping of her feet.

Still, she couldn’t resist biting out, “You try fighting a well-trained Slayer after being gutted by a Rigash demon.”

Faith made a clucking noise with her tongue. “Excuses, excuses.”

“I nearly died.”

“Yeah, _nearly_. Means you didn’t.”

Buffy was still thinking of a suitably spiteful retort to that when Faith’s fist landed in her side, on top of a bruise that was already forming. It knocked the breath out of her and sent her skittering back a few inches.

“Slow,” Faith chastised.

“Fuck you.” Buffy cradled the pulsing ribs that had sustained Faith’s blow. Better not be broken.

“They all go easy on you, you know. It’s bullshit. You’re never gonna get back on the horse with coddling.”

It was laughable to think of Giles’ approach as anything even close to ‘coddling’, and only Faith would ever consider it as such, but then…

Three weeks had passed since Buffy and a small group of Slayers in training had gone out on what they’d all assumed had been a routine mission, and had ended with Buffy bleeding out on cold, gray pavement. Had they been in Sunnydale, she’d have been fending off evil again at this point. But here in Cleveland, in the future they’d created, there were plenty of Slayers to play substitute when one of them got hurt.

Which meant that three weeks after being used as a pincushion for a demon who — to take the metaphor a little further — must’ve been a knitting aficionado, Buffy was here, rehabilitating in a gym, instead of out in the field.

She hadn’t brought up returning to active duty, and neither had Giles. With unease, Buffy registered that the past few weeks felt like the epilogue on four post-Sunnydale years that had her creeping towards retirement. How she felt about that, Buffy had no idea.

To distract her confused mind, she feinted a strike to Faith’s left, then struck her right arm. It hit its mark, the first time she’d managed to injure Faith in a few minutes. The surprise registered on Faith’s face, before being replaced by a elated smile.

“Now we’re talking.”

“You talk too much, actually.” Buffy said, blocking a jab aimed at her jaw and grabbing Faith’s upper arm to push her backwards. “And that’s coming from me.”

Faith cocked her head and smirked, the only warning before she pounced, like a jungle cat spying its favorite meal. Buffy did her best to fend off the rain of blows, kicking at Faith’s legs and twisting the two of them around until they were locked into a parody of a lover’s embrace — fingers clutching at each other, bodies pressed together. Faith’s eyes were a deep black in the dim lights of the gym, and Buffy resisted the urge to smooth out the lines of tension between her dark brows.

The hand in Buffy’s hair slid down to her collarbone, trailing along the skin with the barest of caresses that heated Buffy through all the same. Buffy leaned in, and then her vision blurred in front of her eyes, a dark veil as pain spread through her chest and she had to brace herself against impact.

When the fog cleared, she saw Faith standing a couple of feet in front of her, emanating smugness.

Something about fighting and metaphors, Buffy thought. The phantom wounds on her stomach ached, stitches coming undone.

“I’ve got girls who fight better than you,” Faith reproached, and Buffy breathed through the anger.

Four - seven - eight. In and out, and don’t let the enemy use your temper against you. Connect to the core inside of you and draw strength from it, find the meadow at the center and recompose.

The meadow in Buffy’s mind was on fire. She’d never been any good at meditation.

The next punch Buffy executed hit its mark, and so did the following few kicks, before Faith regained her balance and advanced on Buffy, crowding her back against the wall. Before her back could hit the bricks, Buffy twisted out from under Faith’s grip and grabbed the wooden staff at her feet, driving Faith away from her with a few well-placed blows.

“That’s cheating,” Faith said, rubbing at her hip where the stick had hit her hardest.

Buffy twirled the wooden bar, showing off. “I wasn’t aware there were rules.”

“Hey, that’s my line.” Playful, light-hearted, an echo of an earlier conversation during a quiet evening in this same room, when it felt like Buffy had finally seen the real Faith emerge. There had been moments before that when Buffy had desired her, but that had been the first time she’d considered the possibility of a ‘them’. She could almost feel the softness of Faith’s lips underneath her.

Judging by Faith’s calculating scan down Buffy’s body, she remembered. “You wanna take this someplace else?” she said, the words laced with innuendo.

Buffy let a quiet laugh escape her. “Now that I’m finally getting the upper hand? I don’t think so.”

She twisted the staff over her head then swung wide out, aiming for the same spot on Faith’s hip. The wood connected with a harsh blow, and Faith hissed. Buffy didn’t give her the time to recover, jabbing at her abdomen and legs until Faith was stumbling backwards, covering the sensitive parts of her body with her arms.

For the final blow, Buffy crouched onto the floor and swept the staff at the level of Faith’s knees to bring her down. Faith must’ve seen it coming, through, because she jumped and pulled at the staff in one quick movement, disrupting Buffy’s balance and sending them both crashing onto the mat.

Faith threw away the wooden staff so that it clattered against the wall and onto the floor, too far away for either of them to reach. “You need to focus,” Faith said as she got up, as if she was talking to one of her girls.

This time Buffy anticipated the kick, dodging it and executing a kick of her own, one that grazed Faith’s hip. She doubled over, just enough for Buffy to grab her arm and twist it behind her back.

“I am focused,” Buffy said, pushing Faith forward so she sprawled onto the floor. “I’m focus girl.” She straddled Faith’s hips, pinning her wrists to the ground before they could do damage.

She anticipated a struggle, but Faith had this irritating habit of messing with Buffy’s expectations, and so she went limp underneath her instead, mouth curling up into a lazy smile. “Nice work, B.”

Warily, Buffy leaned back slightly, keeping a tight grip on the thin wrists. They were both breathing hard, Faith’s pulse beating a rabbit-quick drum beneath Buffy’s palms.

It was only because of familiarity with Faith’s particular brand of unpredictability that Buffy managed to soften the impact from being rolled over. She crawled away before Faith could hold her down.

They clashed together again immediately, hitting and dodging at a faster pace than before. Faith’s elbow jammed into Buffy’s side, Buffy’s foot connecting with the bone of Faith’s shoulder, twirling and slinking around each other like a well-practiced dance.

Buffy’s chance came a few minutes later, when she managed to hook her leg behind Faith’s knee, pulling it out from under her so she buckled to the floor on her knees. A few more strokes to Faith’s chest and jaw and she tumbled to the floor completely, slapping her open palm against the mat in quick succession.

“Alright, alright, I surrender,” she gasped out in between breaths. Buffy let go of her and sat down, massaging her neck.

From her slouched position on the floor Faith grinned up at Buffy, lower lip shiny with ruby-red blood, and Buffy felt a rush of arousal burn through her, clean and arrow-straight. The feeling was familiar from other fights and sparring sessions, but it had never felt like this. Like she was plugged in to a live wire that produced jolts when Faith’s tongue snaked out to encounter blood, then again when the bleeding lower lip disappeared into her mouth.

“You got me good,” Faith said, brushing at the edge of her mouth with her thumb and checking it for blood. Buffy could only watch as Faith sucked the thumb into her mouth as well.

By all accounts, Buffy had won, fair and square. Why did it feel like Faith’s victory?

A groan escaped from Faith’s throat as she pushed herself up off the floor into a sitting position, popping joints and stretching her muscles. She twisted her ankle as if to check for injury. “Seriously, you had to blow off steam or what?”

“You told me to stop going easy on you.”

“Yeah, remind me to never repeat that.” Faith’s sweat-soaked shirt was dirty from rolling across the floor. She raised it to reveal the bruise blooming purple across her hip, disappearing below the edge of her sweatpants. It looked vicious. Felt like it too, probably, judging by the hiss as Faith prodded at it. Buffy felt an answering twinge in her elbow where she had banged it into the ground. Needed ice, maybe. She’d get ice, once she stopped being so transfixed by the tantalizing slivers of skin being bared as Faith checked her body for more bruises.

“Feel any better?” Faith asked, snapping Buffy out of her reverie.

“No one’s coddling me,” Buffy said, picking up on Faith’s comment from earlier. “I just needed time to—”

“Figure out what you wanted.”

“—Recover.”

“Yeah, okay,” Faith said, disbelief clear in her tone.

Buffy wanted to elaborate, but talking had never been part of their relationship. Arguing, sure. Maybe some small talk, or business-related discussion. Sex, as of recently. But deep and meaningful conversations? Those simply didn’t belong in the same sentence as Faith, unless there was a ‘no’, ‘never’ or ‘nuh-uh’ somewhere in that phrase as well.

And still, Faith must be having these conversations with someone. Just not with Buffy. Which was fine, really.

Except maybe it wasn’t.

They were close enough that Faith’s leg brushed up against Buffy’s every time she shifted. Deliberately, if the sidelong glances she shot at Buffy were any indication. She did that a lot; grazing past Buffy when they were in a room full of people, locking their gazes together across the table. Small, barely perceptible stuff, easily brushed off by anyone who might catch it. It made Buffy feel like she was having — yet another — illicit affair, when for once that wasn’t even the case. Merely simpler, to slip into Faith’s bedroom and under her warm sheets after everyone had gone to bed, than to face the questions and expectations of the others.

Faith wiped a thin sheen of perspiration off her forehead and grinned knowingly at Buffy. She was flushed all over, attractively so, and all the way down to her chest. The ruddiness disappeared under her t-shirt, and Buffy wanted to chase it with her tongue.

This thing they had was still new enough that it took her a few moments to realize that she could do exactly that, now.

To her credit, Faith didn’t look anywhere near surprised when Buffy crawled into her lap. Buffy would’ve probably been taken aback if Faith had done the same, but then Faith was always more willing to roll with things.

Buffy could be spontaneous as well, though. So spontaneous as to curl her hands around Faith’s bare upper arms and lick a long line up her neck, right up to her ear where she nuzzled into the damp skin. The salty tang on her tongue reminded her of sweaty nights tangled up in sheets more comfortable than the gym floor, but it made Buffy hungry for more all the same.

“I knew fighting made you insatiable,” Faith murmured against Buffy’s cheek, running her hands down Buffy’s back to grip her ass. “Or is it just fighting me?”

“Keep fishing for compliments,” Buffy said, and grabbed the hem of Faith’s shirt so she could push it over her head, exposing planes of enticingly pale skin.

Faith took the shirt from her hands and flung it somewhere over her shoulder, then leaned back, slow and deliberate, splaying herself before Buffy like a five-course meal. “Don’t worry, that look in your eyes is enough of a compliment.”

Buffy didn’t use to be this easy. There was something in Faith that coaxed it out of her, silver strings tugging at the deepest parts of her, and Faith played them like a virtuoso. It felt like falling, and that wouldn’t be so bad, if only Buffy didn’t feel like she was doing it alone.

The moonlight coming from the overhead window played over Faith’s skin in cinematic ribbons as she stripped herself of her bra and wriggled out of her sweatpants, nearly throwing Buffy off her lap in the process.

“You gonna catch up anytime soon?” she asked, nodding at Buffy’s still fully-dressed appearance. Buffy didn’t answer, only pressed their bodies closer together again. Truth was, she kind of liked it this way — Faith naked but for the scrap of black fabric she called panties, her bare nipples pressing against Buffy through her own thin cotton shirt. It gave Buffy a semblance of control that she didn’t usually feel with Faith, and what that said about her was something she probably didn’t want to examine any further.

Buffy breathed open-mouthed kisses against Faith’s collarbone and then finally, finally pressed their mouths together in a deep kiss that seemed to have been building since Faith had suggested a sparring session after they’d sent the girls home.

The first time giving into this desire had been — to use a cliche or two — fireworks, and Buffy had expected things to stop feeling that way soon enough, once the novelty wore off. That had yet to happen, though, and Buffy had started to wonder if it ever would. If it would always feel this way, Faith’s touch a one-switch button to arousal. Zero to sixty with a few flirtatious lines in that Boston drawl and a taste of her plush lips.

Warm hands were inching their way under Buffy’s shirt and tracing the edge of her bra, the callouses sending sparks down Buffy’s spine straight through to the heat in her groin, and meanwhile Faith’s tongue slowly licked at Buffy’s lips. She sighed as Buffy opened her mouth just enough to allow her to venture deeper, tracing the shape of her teeth. Their tongues brushed. Faith tasted like coffee and a little like the cigarettes she swore she wasn’t going to smoke anymore, but Buffy would be crazy to complain about that now, when this felt so good.

Longer kisses, more eager, Faith occasionally nipping at Buffy’s bottom lip because she knew how that drove her crazy, and Buffy felt her skin flush with heat.

“Are you finally gonna take this shit off?” Faith said, pulling at Buffy’s shirt and dragging her hands down Buffy’s sides to edge down her pants. Together, they managed to remove Buffy’s clothes without breaking their kiss for more than a few seconds, and then their naked skins pressed together.

Sometimes they dragged this out, kissed until they were both flushed and sweaty and desperate for release. It seemed Faith didn’t have the patience for that today, though, since her hand soon found Buffy’s underwear. She rubbed her through the fabric once, twice, then burrowed inside to drag her fingers through the dampness there.

“I was thinking,” Buffy said into Faith’s neck, on the tail-end of a gasp.

Faith’s fingers stilled. She pulled her head back to look at Buffy in genuine bafflement. “Now?”

“Yeah, just — keep going,” she urged, grinding her hips down into Faith’s lap and onto her hand. “I was thinking. We should tell the others.”

“Oh my god.” Faith’s expression wavered somewhere between disbelief and exasperation. “You really wanna have The Talk now?”

“It’s not exactly a topic for pillow talk either,” Buffy tried arguing, but Faith just rolled her eyes at her.

“’Cause the only time we interact is when we have sex?” she asked. Then, when Buffy didn’t answer, “Quit pouting at me. Damn, but you’re a handful.”

Buffy had an answer for that, she did, but when Faith leaned in and kissed her until her mind was comfortably blank, the argument didn’t seem to matter all that much anymore. Faith’s fingers resumed their ministrations, pressing more insistently at Buffy’s folds and grazing across her clit, and Buffy felt herself spiraling higher with every caress.

“You feel so good,” Faith murmured into Buffy’s hair. “So wet for me.” And Buffy had always expected, on some level, that Faith would be into that sort of stuff, but she hadn’t anticipated how it would affect her. How it would ramp up the heat until she was throwing her head back and gasping, clutching at Faith’s shoulders as a stream of filthy words was whispered into her ear. It took a crook of Faith’s fingers inside of her and the feeling of teeth grazing her neck, and then she was coming, back arching and choking out Faith’s name.

When she came back down, Faith was nuzzling into her jaw and nipping at it with playful bites. “Good?” she asked, as if she didn’t know the answer already. The smug grin on her face said she did.

“There you go, fishing for compliments again,” Buffy said, and then, to show Faith her gratefulness, bent down to take one of her nipples in her mouth.

Faith cursed, low and gravelly, and wrapped her hands into Buffy’s hair. The grip tightened, right on the edge of painful pleasure, when Buffy bit down gently, then slid down until she could settle in between Faith’s spread thighs.

“Feel free to compliment me, though. Elaborately and in full detail,” Buffy said, before leaning in and licking a long stripe up Faith’s cunt.

Faith flopped back onto the mat, and Buffy let the gasps and moans guide her further, licking faster and slower, teasing Faith’s clit until she got fed up and told Buffy to get a move on already. If Faith’s nakedness gave Buffy a sense of control, this made her feel powerful, like those first few fights with her newfound Slayer strength. It was a heady feeling, to have Faith so open and honest, for once stripped of all pretenses. Buffy wanted her like this, always. More than that, she wanted others to see this Faith too. Undone, all because of Buffy.

“Fuck, will you just—” Faith’s words came out in gasps as her hips rolled up to meet Buffy’s mouth.

“Hmm?” Buffy said, just because she could.

“Buffy, please. More.” Her desperation tasted so sweet that Buffy took pity on her, sucking on her clit until she could feel the muscles of Faith’s thighs tense around her, a deep sigh escaping her lips when Buffy licked her through the aftershocks.

“What’s it taste like?” Faith asked idly once she’d regained her breath, head pillowed on her arm and eyes taking in Buffy with half-lidded intimacy.

In lieu of a reply, Buffy crawled on top her prone body and pressed her lips to Faith’s in a open-mouthed kiss that quickly turned heated.

“Tastes like that,” Buffy said as she pulled back, and Faith grinned wickedly before stealing another quick kiss.

Buffy settled her head on Faith’s thigh and mentally catalogued the ache in her various muscles. It felt good, to have them hurt like this again, not from disuse but from physical exertion.

“I think I’m going back out into the field,” she said aloud.

Faith hummed. “You decided that while we were having sex.”

“Just now, really.” She stroked a hand along Faith’s hip. “Also, I think we should tell the others about this. I did decide that while we were having sex. Well, maybe I’d been thinking about it a little before that, but—”

“Sure.”

“What?” Buffy raised her head to look at Faith, but her eyes were closed.

“I said, sure.”

“Really?” Buffy couldn’t help some skepticism from creeping into her voice.

Faith’s eyes blinked open and stared at Buffy, unflinching. “That’s what I said.”

Buffy broke the stare and laid back down. Her sweaty limbs were growing cold, and the floor was quickly getting uncomfortable, but it felt nice to stay here for a bit, in post-coital harmony. “Great,” she said.

She felt a hand settle into her hair and slowly comb through the tangles, a soothing motion that felt more intimate than the prior sex. As she closed her eyes, Buffy let a tentative smile curl her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://queennsansa.tumblr.com/)


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